What happened? I was so optimistic that they would get things done for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations this week in Hawaii. I ignored the (excellent) advice of my professor and issued predictions of success on a fast-moving target. We even had a booklet ready to go on the benefits of the agreement for businesses. My planned blog post for this week had us drinking champagne by now.

But no champagne (or sparkling wine) is going to be popped open for most people after the collapse of negotiations in Hawaii. The bottles will go back on ice for a very long time—at least early 2017.

Why? Because Hawaii really did represent the last, best chance for a deal in the near term. Ministers have apparently decided to reconvene on the sidelines of APEC in November to try again.

The cold logic of deadlines, however, shows that a deal reached in November is not going to be helpful. Recall that once the officials agree on a draft text, this is not the end. Instead, internal procedures in the United States (and others) means a delay of at least 90 days prior to final signatures on the agreement. Entry into force is even further off.

Even if ministers solve the current impasse in the TPP in November, then, the deal would be ready (best case) in February or March for presentation to Congress. Congress has to agree under new TPA rules before the President can sign the agreement. Congress will also be voting on all the implementing legislation necessary for the agreement to come into force for the United States.

There is no way that Congress will want to take a politically suicidal vote in favor of trade in March 2016 with an election looming. Hence, the deal is stuck until after the elections (November 2016) or even until after the new president is installed in January 2017. Even then, passage cannot be assured.

So what happened on the ground in Hawaii? There will be much finger pointing and recriminations in the wake of the talks.

If I had to put my own finger on it, the immediate cause of collapse can be traced to Canada’s refusal to discuss dairy in any meaningful way until the final 3 days of negotiations. This was, as I have previously noted, a high risk strategy.

I assume officials gambled that, if they waited until the bitter end, everyone else would be so willing to get a deal done that they would take whatever poor offer Canada made on dairy liberalization.

The gamble could be taken, in part, because negotiations over dairy are infinitely more complex and time-consuming than equivalent difficulties in other sectors. For instance, another problematic issue for ministers in Hawaii concerned the patent length for biologic medicines. But the fight over patent length, while serious for participants, could at least be sorted quickly. The number was gong to be 12, 8, 7 or 5 years of protection. The choice might be hard, but once made, the final figure could be quickly slotted into the waiting text.

Dairy, by contrast, is not just the tariff concessions or tariff rate quotas (even more complicated) for fresh milk. The number of lines of dairy products runs into the hundreds or thousands. It includes all sorts of varieties of milk—fresh, powdered, canned, UHT, etc. It includes milk products of all sorts. Plus butter and cheese. Cheese is, of course, not just one kind of cheese, but cheddar and Swiss and creamed.

In short, getting an agreement on dairy is not simple and, logistically, cannot be sorted in 3 days or even a week.

It is not like this was a new or unexpected problem either. Canada was originally prevented from joining the negotiations in 2010 over concerns by the other TPP members that Canada would not be willing to discuss dairy or anything related to their domestic supply management system. However, Canadian officials insisted they were prepared to move ahead with meaningful changes.

In Hawaii, Canada apparently offered a flat quota for liquid milk equivalents—ie, anything that could be made (including fresh milk) with a certain quantity of milk would qualify. Once the quota was filled, no additional access at TPP tariff rates would be granted.

There is not enough room in this blog post to detail all the reasons this is a horrible plan for anyone hoping to obtain meaningful access the Canadian dairy market. Perhaps a future post will go into dairy in greater detail.

For now, accept that once the Americans saw the Canadian plan, they promptly withdrew their own offers to partners for additional dairy access into the United States. After all, American dairy farmers were presumed to be willing to support the TPP if—and only if—any potential losses could be offset by greater sales elsewhere and particularly into Canada. If Canada was not going to be a new, important market, then it was not worthwhile to offer up concessions to others to access the American market either.

I can only imagine the reaction in New Zealand. Their primary interest in the entire agreement has been to receive additional dairy access. Although the Kiwi market is dynamic and competitive in many areas, more than 30 percent of their economy remains tied to milk and dairy exports. With these markets effectively shutting before their eyes in Hawaii, officials must have watched in total disbelief.

In addition, Australia also had troubles with the dairy offer (and American offers on sugar). With the U.S. dairy deal off the table, the Aussies promptly withdrew any support for changing the patent length protections on biologics (a key deliverable for the Americans).

Mexico, which has been defending its special access to the NAFTA markets all along in various sectors, suddenly came forward to object to rules of origin (ROOs) around autos. The current NAFTA provisions call for 65 percent content from NAFTA countries. These rules have helped make Mexico into an automotive powerhouse and the possibility of lowering the percentage of content required in the TPP led to strong Mexican objections.

With the unraveling of autos and the contested dairy elements of the agreement, various other complaints from different TPP members must have risen to a crescendo. Reconciling these interests has always been a heavy lift. But once officials realized that key outcomes were being pulled off the table by others in the end, the stampede to protect your own markets and not be left exposed must have been unstoppable.

I thought they would delay the finish for another 24 hours. Instead, with everything in such flux, officials just called off the whole thing to fight another day. I would bet that many said—with domestic elections in Canada finished in October—the dairy stuff could be addressed by the next meeting.

The key problem with such a strategy, as I just pointed out, is that this delay is not simply from July to November. It could be a delay of 18 months or more. People in the coming days will undoubtedly be pointing to the global trade talks that have dragged on for more than a decade with no agreement (despite their own deadline of July 31) to even get a plan in place to discuss a path forward.

The TPP now finds itself in very uncertain territory. The only salvation I can imagine is to finally invite the South Koreans to join the talks. If you aren’t going to be done for ages, you might as well expand the party. If Korea comes in, perhaps Taiwan will also make a renewed push for entry.

At least then officials have new excuse for delays in closing a trade agreement that has been underway for what frankly feels like forever.